'The Beare howse', a little west and north of 'The play howse', which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet, in a suit of 1620:[1]
'He saith that he remembreth that the game of bear-bayting hath
been kept in fower severall places (vizt.) at Mason Steares on the
bankside; neere Maid-lane by the corner of the Pyke Garden; at
the beare garden which was parcell of the possession of William Payne;
and the place where they are now kept.'
Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory
would easily go back to the time of the early maps. To his
testimony may be added that of Stowe, who says in his
Survey of London (1598):[2]
'Now to returne to the West banke, there be two Beare gardens, the
olde and new places, wherein be kept Beares, Buls and other beastes
to be bayted. As also Mastiues in severall kenels, nourished to baite
them. These Beares and other Beasts are there bayted in plottes of
ground, scaffolded about for the Beholders to stand safe. Next on
this banke was sometime the Bordello or stewes.'
In his Annales Stowe records the fall of 'the old and under
propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly
called Paris garden', and the consequent death of eight persons,
at 4 p.m. on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says,
'a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves in the
cruelty of beasts, than in the works of mercy, the fruits of
a true professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath day's
exercise'.[3] Dr. Dee also noted the accident in his diary, and
it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the Lord Mayor
and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[4] Both of these
adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded
as divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and
Fleetwood refers to 'a booke sett downe vpon the same
matter', which may be John Field's Godly Exhortation by
Occasion of the late Judgment of God showed at Paris Garden.
The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More, upon a similar event,
- ↑ Rendle, Antiquarian, viii. 57, from Exchequer Depositions, 18 Jac. I. The depositions also mention a bull-house built in a dog-yard, a bear-house, a hay-house, a pond for the bears to wash in, and a pond for dead dogs. Kingsford, 175, gives fuller extracts.
- ↑ Stowe, Survey, ii. 54. A short passage in i. 95 adds nothing.
- ↑ Stowe (1615), 695.
- ↑ Halliwell, Dr. Dee's Diary (C. S.), 18; App. C, No. xxxi; App. D, No. lxiv. The ballad of which four stanzas are given by Collier, i. 244, is presumably a forgery.
